How Good Carbohydrates can Beat Bad Cholesterol

Nutritionists and health experts have been urging individuals to adopt low fat diets for decades. As obesity increases and more people develop unhealthy ‘bad’ cholesterol counts, the situation is becoming increasingly urgent. While there are complex psychological factors influencing why certain individuals consume far too much food than is either healthy or required for sustaining bodily functions, it may also be the case that the medical advice we have been receiving has been rather too simplistic. Eating a low-fat diet will not necessarily lead to a drop in ‘LDL’ (low density cholesterol – the dangerous type).

A team of scientists from Stanford University studied a group of 120 men and women between the ages of 30 and 65 years. The volunteers, all of whom suffered from high rates of LDL cholesterol, were randomly allocated to one of two different ‘low fat’ diets. While both the diets had the same quantity of total fat (30% of the calorific value), saturated fat (10% of calories), cholesterol (200 mg per day) and carbohydrates (55% of calories), all similarities ended there. It may be thought that there would be little left for any differences to emerge, but one of the diets had a radically different type of carbohydrate content as compared with the other.

Diet ‘1’ (called by the researchers the ‘Low-Fat Diet’) included carbohydrates fairly typical of US (and UK) high-carbohydrate food intake, and consisted of highly refined convenience foods like Rice Krispies cereal, white bread, waffles, diet cookies and low-fat frozen lasagna. Diet ‘2’ (the ‘Low-Fat Plus Diet’) minimized the pre-packaged carbohydrates, replacing them instead with natural, fiber-rich foods such as whole grains, fresh vegetables, fruit and beans.

Four weeks later, the 60 people in the Low-Fat Plus Diet group had shown a steep drop in total blood cholesterol (down 17.6%) and in LDL cholesterol (down 14%). By contrast, those on the refined-carbohydrate ‘Low Fat Diet’ had shown a drop of only 9% total cholesterol and 7% LDL – roughly just half the results obtained by the other group.

Advice provided by the federal government during the 1980s and 1990s urged individuals to avoid saturated fats and cholesterol in their diets – advice that this research suggests may have been far too simplistic to be effective. Lowering fat and cholesterol intake is only one aspect of successful LDL cholesterol reduction; it needs to be combined with eating the right carbohydrates. Fruits, beans, vegetables and whole grains are helpful, while cookies, highly refined cereals and white bread are harmful in other ways (whether or not they are low in fat). Indeed, if the fat content is further reduced, the results of consuming natural carbohydrates is even more pronounced – a study from 1991 found that very low-fat diets with high-fiber carbohydrates produced a 23% fall in LDL cholesterol in just three weeks.

Populations in countries with the lowest rates of heart disease overwhelmingly consume diets high in unrefined, high-fiber carbohydrates. Perhaps the refined convenience foods we in the highly developed Western countries are accustomed to consuming are in fact turning out to be far more inconvenient than we could ever have imagined.

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